Columnists

Hola, mi compadres Ingles. Welcome to week three of my World Cup diary, and what a week it has been for Colombia.

On Friday, we became victorious over the Ivory Coast and so on to the final group partido against Japan. Of course, we were already qualificado for the next phase of the competition so the game not so important.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, recently addressed the nation following his receipt of reports on a number of schools in Birmingham. Although the catchment areas of these schools are overwhelmingly Muslim, they are not "faith" schools, but common-or-garden state - that is, taxpayer-funded - secular schools that happen to serve populations of the Islamic faith.

For the past six years, Israel's government has had to manoeuvre round the fact that its most powerful ally is run by a man who, while claiming to "have Israel's back", loses no opportunity to stick the knife into it.

Last week, this dismal history reached a new low when the Obama administration declared it would recognise the new "unity" government in which the Palestinian Authority has allied

It didn’t take long. Within days of the Brussels murders, the conspiracy theorists (for which, read: “the Jews did it”) were at it. Step forward, Tariq Ramadan, lecturer on contemporary Islamic issues at Oxford University and Muslim Brotherhood aristocrat — the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the Islamist group’s founder.

In principle, I have no objection whatever to sundry Jewish individuals being paid more than me. When I embarked on an academic career I knew that I would never number myself among the high-end earners.

My father, who became a self-employed salesman, never knew from one week to another what his disposable income would be.

Reading the Sunday Times Rich List is always exciting – it’s almost like waiting for your children’s A-level results. There are all the congratulatory phone calls to make and a few miserable oligarchs who have fallen down the rankings. But I was delighted to see Awesome Alexander Knaster rising up the pile this year.